Another Superb Gem from Adu and Crew!!!!!

I wish I could give it 4 3/4 stars, this is an outstanding album, but falls short of being as good as "Promise".



Vocally this is Sade at her best, however the others steal the spotlight on the majority of the songs. "No Ordinary Love" and "Kiss of Life" are classic Sade songs, while "No Ordinary Love" follows the melancholy formula the band is infamous for, "Kiss of Life" follows the formula of previous classics like "Smooth Operator" and "Sweetest Taboo", but this time, well for me, I can call this a genuine Sade love ballad, a rarity in my books. I brought those two tracks up, because on these two, the vocalist and the band flow like a summer breeze. On "Pearls" and "Feel No Pain", Sade is all preachy and clearly gets her message out and doesn't overdo it, like other artist who make you scream, "we get the picture". Again, the vocalist and band flow nicely together. My favorite track on the entire album, is "Bullet Proof Soul", just an all around nice cut.



The rest, it's all the band. Sade blesses "Cherish The Day" lovely, but the guy on bass is blessing much better to the point that I want Sade to stop singing. Same goes for "I Couldn't Love You More, where sade isn't outshined so much, but again the other guys are the real stars. The band raps things up with "Mermaids", just them this time, maybe Sade was like screw it, just do your thing guys. Mermaid falls short of "Siempre Hay Esperanza" and "Punch Drunk", but I was far from disappointed.



I noticed that on this album they kept it safe, which is good, but nothing groundbreaking, nothing new. Just updated Sade joints, which is always good, but looking back, that would be the only drawback to this album, outside of the band outshing the vocalist, that should always balance out.



In conclusion, this is another solid gem from Sade. If you don't have it, stop reading this and get it fool!

From Chanteuse to Prophetess

No one expected this!



By the early 1990's, Sade's brand of lush pop had given way to hard-edged rap, the techno-dawn was rising on house music, and "new school" r&b was stealing from every direction to keep up with it all.



Sade's last effort (1988's "Pride") had been a directionless and formulaic attempt at marrying Sade's romantic stylings to an ever-so-slight world music influence (time now shines a more kind light on that release...).



When I first got this, I played it once, said "What the Hell is That all About?", and promptly forgot about it. It must have been a month or so later when I heard one of it's tracks unexpectedly and WOKE UP! Sade had not only put a new and fresh spin on her own persona, she and her band had single-handedly pointed the way to every wandering and struggling R&B ensemble in the process. More so than any other early 90*s release, this one layed a blueprint for what was to come.



The unabashed romanticism of the lyrics is geniously offset by the heavily reggae/dub-influenced arrangements. To this day, I do not know nor have any idea where "Cherish the Day" came from. I only know that it's pure magic and literally marked the sun coming up on R&B!!



Like the album's title suggests, you've never heard love quite like this before. Unfortunately, we've all too seldom heard anything like it since. The exceptions would be Maxwell's first and second efforts (produced by Stuart Mattewman of Sade's band), and the Sweetback c.d.'s (actually Sade's band under nom-de-guerre, and including Maxwell on their first effort). As I said, the influence was strongly and widely felt, just not quite captured by anyone else.



"Bulletproof Soul" is right up there with k.d. lang's "Save Me" and all of "Dusty in Memphis" for obsessive love gone wrong, it was one of God's kinder tricks that all three artists were in rotation on my Walkman at the same time. It taught me well and good that Love knows no genre...

It does not get better than this CD for Sade

What a gift to the music world, One of the most sensual voices I have ever heard. Her DVD is Awesome and very well produced. You realy get a great feel for how talented

& funky her band is with the DVD "Sade Live"